ISAP Research Projects
Name of Project: A Substance-Abuse Monitoring
System for Egyptian & Israeli Communities
Principal Investigator: Richard A. Rawson, Ph.
D.
Project Director: Al Hasson
Funding Agency: National Opinion Research Center
(NORC)
Funding Period: October 2002-September 2004
Scope of Project: The extent of psychoactive
substance use and abuse among the citizens of Israeli and Palestinian
communities is unknown. There is no data collection system in
place to provide information for making empirically sound incidence
and prevalence estimates. This project is conducting a plan of
work that would initiate data collection approaches developed
by scientists in the U.S. that will generate data for providing
such information. The Community Epidemiological Workgroup (CEWG)
is a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded multi-agency
consortium approach with a public health orientation that studies
the spread or development of substance use trends within and across
communities. The first set of data being collected for review
by the CEWG group will be data from scientifically sound student
surveys in Israel and Palestinian communities. This project proposes
to establish these two data collection systems in four communities
(2 Palestinian and 2 Israeli). A program for organizing and training
community representatives for an ongoing program of bi-annual
CEWG meetings in the Israel-Palestinian region will be conducted
with technical assistance from leading US scientists. The resulting
data and information will serve as the basis for an ongoing substance
abuse monitoring system, sustainable through the joint efforts
of the relevant Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. public health and
criminal justice agencies.
For more information, contact Richard
A. Rawson.
Last updated - 12/09/2005